English College Writing APA and MLA Citation Style

Question:-

write difference between APA and MLA Citation Style

Answer:-

The role of citation is to provide evidence of the ideas if they do not belong to the writer. It serves as a tool to check the facts presented in the current study and is a symbol of a good research. There are different citation formats such as APA, MLA, Harvard, CMS, AMA etc. They present information in slightly different ways from each other and are chosen according to the field and requirement of the study. E.g. For medical papers, mainly APA format is used.

The two sample essays use MLA-5b and APA-5b uses MLA and APA citations respectively. For both the formats quotation marks are not needed when long quotations are used and indented. However, for MLA the required indent is one inch and for APA it is one-half inch from the left margin. For tables, MLA recommends the citation as a not below the table however for APA a footnote is required for the source citation in addition to a content note. Also, author-page format is used in MLA while author-date-page format is used in APA. The works cited format is Author’s last name, date and source for MLA and Author’s last name, source name, and date for APA. In MLA the list of bibliography is called ‘Works Cited’ while for APA it is ‘References’.  For more than two authors MLA has citations with “et al” whereas APA has “et al” for subsequent citations after the first one. For both styles the reference list is arranged alphabetically according to the authors’ last names. Also, for both styles First line of each entry is at the left margin; extra lines are indented 1/2 inch. Double spacing is also common for both.

MLA has a more detailed approach to references and citations as compared to APA. Hence, it can be said that MLA format delivers information better than APA and with much more ease of cross-checking. Overall, both the styles are quite similar to each other and can be quite confusing for the writer. The influence on work is determined by the type of work. For literary works, history, language studies, philosophy, arts, legal studies etc. the volume can be quite large and therefore MLA would be more suitable than APA. Whereas, in medical or academic works such as nursing, sociology, social studies, business studies, criminology etc. shorter references may be required, hence APA would be applicable. Therefore, the difference does influence the work but it depends on the type of information required and the area of study. Otherwise, if there is no pre-requirement mentioned about the citation style it might become difficult for the writer to choose. The choice of style also affects the formatting style of the paper and therefore only considering the bibliography list and in-text citation differences would not be adequate to decide on the influence of the styles.